Origins (9 page)

“Once we’re through the storm, get us back to our optimal glide path and reassess our chances of hitting the landing target,” Hastelloy ordered while attempting to keep himself from bouncing out of his command chair from the turbulence.

As suddenly as they appeared, the bumps vanished and Valnor delivered his prognosis about reaching the landing site.  “We’re in the middle of a sea about 100 miles away from the targeted landing site, but we’re going to come about ten miles short of the island.  The really bad news is there’s no other landmass reachable for us at this point.  What do we do Captain?”

“Yield your station to me and learn a new trick,” Hastelloy ordered.

Valnor slowly rose from his station.  He looked understandably puzzled, but also psychologically devastated.  Being relieved of duty was indeed a dire insult, but Hastelloy didn’t have time to give a lesson.  He slid into the helm station and immediately angled the ship’s nose downward.

“But sir, you’re losing altitude too fast, you’ll only shorten our gliding distance,” Valnor protested.

The captain paid no attention.  The ships speed accelerated as it neared the water’s surface.  The craft still had fifteen miles to the island’s shores when Hastelloy pulled the nose back up and held the altitude steady at 150 feet off the waves of the sea below.  To everyone’s surprise, except the captain, the loss of air speed was almost non-existent. 

“You’re witnessing the wing-in-ground effect at its best right now,” Hastelloy instructed.  “When a winged craft in an atmosphere is flown close to the water, wingtip vortices are disrupted. The result is lower induced drag, which increases the speed and lift of the aircraft.  We’re basically riding a cushion of air between the water and the belly of our ship.”

Once the Lazarus was over the island, Hastelloy deployed the air brakes, pulled the ship up into a series of controlled stalls and set the craft down, light as a feather, a few hundred feet from the southern shore.  He instantly stood up from the helm station and issued orders. 

“Tonwen, distribute vaccinations to everyone for the viruses and bacteria on this world and then pop the hatch.  We’ve got work to do.”

The captain turned to meet Valnor’s wide-eyed gaze, “Don’t worry.  You didn’t fall asleep during class.  They don’t teach that little maneuver at the academy,” and walked towards Tonwen to receive his injection.

On his way to receive his own vaccination, Valnor st
opped to talk with Gallono.  “I am not sure about you, but I am real glad he’s on our side.”

Chapter 12:  Just a Warm Up

Alex huffed and
puffed as she willed her legs and arms to descend one more rung down the ladder built into the side of the tunnel Professor Russell, Dr. Andre, and she discovered.  Although young and in reasonably good shape, climbing down the three hundred foot ladder was testing her limits.  Maybe it wasn’t the physical exertion so much as the mental strain of lowering herself into a seemingly bottomless pit. 

The darkness pressed in around her like no other place she’d ever been; it was almost suffocating.  She couldn’t shake the sensation of having an anchor tied around her waist dragging her down to the bottom of the ocean.  The feeling only intensified as she sank deeper and deeper down the dark shaft.

Alex looked straight ahead, past her hands, to the polished metallic side of the tunnel.  It was unnatural, she thought, how the light from the miner’s lamp on her head didn’t reflect much off the wall.  Normal polished metal amplifies light hitting it; instead, this substance greedily horded the illuminating rays so she could only see ten feet into the darkness that enveloped her.  The one comfort keeping her from scampering back up to the surface was the voice of Professor Russell down below growing closer. 

Alex’s foot slipped off the next foothold, nearly causing her to fall.  She managed to pull her body weight back up with her arms and let out a labored sigh.  “Are we there yet?”

“I’m afraid I can’t see you quite yet, but judging by the smell, I’d say you’re getting close,” Professor Russell teased.

“Rais
e your hand if you’re sure?” Alex quoted from the old underarm deodorant commercials as she continued climbing again.  “I think I could’ve put a whole stick of deodorant on this morning, and I’d still smell like a wet dog right now.”

Finally, Alex saw solid
ground beneath her feet and gratefully let go of the ladder.  Panting like she just ran a mile in world record time, she gasped, “I have to say . . .  you two . . . are putting me to shame.  Here I am . . .  half your age . . . about ready to pass out, and you’ve barely broke a sweat.”

“My dear, that was just a warm
up.  Now we have to hike three miles back to the Sphinx and cap it all off by climbing back up,” Dr. Andre said.  “Do you need to rest a few minutes before we proceed?”

Not to be outdone by her elders, Alex took a deep breath, stood up straight and started walking down the tunnel with determination in every step.  “Just try to keep up.”

Even thought Alex was only five foot six inches, she felt a compulsion to hunch lower as the tunnel’s ceiling was only a few inches above her head.  She felt a certain sympathy for her two companions who actually needed to bend lower as their height exceeded that of the six foot wide, six foot tall metal tube.

As she led the subterranean march back to the Sphinx, a feeling of being trapped began to overwhelm Alex.  The claustrophobic feeling of the darkness grew to a fevered pitch as a thousand needle pricks danced up and down her spine. Her mind was briefly pulled back from the ensuing panic attack by the professor’s astute observation.

“Have you noticed how the light from our lamps doesn’t reflect off the walls much?  It’s a little eerie don’t you think?”

“Well y
eah,” Alex blasted back.  “You’d think the assistant to a field archeologist would get numb to any creepy feelings when entering a tomb or underground tunnel.  I still get the brief mental twinge like I just walked across someone’s grave but that always goes away after a short while.  This place just won’t quit.  I feel like a little kid who just watched
Children of the Corn
at midnight and then ran into the nearest corn field to experience the terror first hand.”

Professor Russell let out a hearty laugh.  “I guess that’s one way to think of this place.  If you want to torture yourself by all means keep it up.”

“If you have a better mindset for me, I’m open to suggestions,” Alex responded with a touch of anger at her very real fears being dismissed so flippantly.

“I’ll admit when I first climbed down the ladder I had the feeling something was lurking just outside the reach of the light waiting to grab me,” the professor said.  With a chuckle he continued.  “Now I can’t shake the image of a giant ogre sitting on a toilet at the end of this tube waiting to flush.  I sure hope he’s reading a good article and takes his time.”

Alex burst out laughing at the mental image, and just like that her anxiety was gone, washed away with a giant flush.

“On a more serious note, how do you think a tunnel like this has remained hidden for all these years?” Professor Russell asked.

Dr. Andre answered promptly. “That is not hard to understand at all.  The Sphinx rests in a depressed section of desert.  The sands are constantly shifting to fill any voids.  As a result, for most of its existence, the Sphinx has been buried up to its neck in sand. 

“It was uncovered once by King Thutmose IV around 1425.” Dr. Andre instructed, “By the time Napoleon and his army arrived in Egypt, the great statue was once again buried up to the neck.  The sand was not fully cleared away again until 1936, so we have really only had about a hundred years of full access to the Sphinx to work with.  To be fair, most of the work done today revolves around preserving the statue, not exploring for fabled mystery chambers.”

“Over the years, three holes have been put into the Sphinx,” Professor Russell added.  “One right behind the head, and two others around the base.  It’s surprising none of those initiatives discovered anything.  Instead, they were promptly sealed back up.”

“Maybe those projects were approved because the people hiding the chamber knew they wouldn’t come close to anything critical,” Alex submitted.

“Even armed with tools like ground penetrating radar, archeologists weren’t able to find this place,” Dr. Andre protested.  “The bulk of the Sphinx’s body sits directly on top of the tunnel entrance which blocked the readings.  Plus, who would have ever thought to look for an entrance to the tunnel three miles away across the other side of the Nile River?  There was virtually no chance of discovering the tunnel until your sonic density procedure was perfected.” 

Alex suddenly stopped dead in her tracks and shushed the others.  As the induced silence set in a faint whisper from the darkness ahead came clear.  Slowly, the explorers proceeded forward.  It definitely was not voices, but it grew louder with each hesitant step.  It began to sound very much like
the squeaky sound of someone washing windows up ahead.  Soon the noise was all around them and accompanied by the loud echo of trickling water. 

“Do you think your giant finally finished his business,” Alex asked.

“No my dear,” Dr. Andre answered.  “I believe we are walking directly underneath the Nile River right now.  The engineering that went into build this tunnel is just remarkable.  There is not a single seam allowing the ground water all around to seep in.  This tunnel is a real marvel.”

Professor Russell stopped to scrape his hand along the side of the passageway. His fingertips made a muffled squeak as they moved along the smooth wall.  “Now that I think about it, there’s nothing proving this tunnel was constructed thousands of years ago.  Look at the walls, the alloys used in them couldn’t have existed back in ancient Egypt.”

“I suppose that’s true,” Alex said.  “There’s nothing indicating this tunnel was constructed along with the Sphinx.  The hidden room and tube could’ve been added later.  Heck, it might have been put in last year and serves as a secret government base, or some high end dry cleaning business for all we know.”

“I think we will acquire the answer to all your questions in a few minutes, young lady,” Dr. Andre said.  “I see the end of the tunnel up ahead, and the dreaded climb back to the surface awaits.”

  The professor focused the beam of his flashlight and the three explorers followed the light until it ended at a shiny wall with ladder rungs heading up built into the side.  When they reached the base of the ladder, Dr. Andre directed his flashlight up the shaft.  A collective groan escaped all three when they saw no end to the darkness above.

“Oh . . . joy,” Alex sighed.

Chapter 13:  Follow the Directive

After receiving his
injection, Hastelloy took some time to look around his ship.  Gallono would report the specifics, but he could plainly see the old girl’s best days were behind her.  The air reeked of ozone from circuits that shorted out during their blazing hot descent.  The multiple electrical fires left the air thick with smoke to the point Hastelloy could only see faint outlines of the workstations and his crew just a few feet away.  “So what’s the good word Gallono?”

“I have the final damage report.  Do you want the good news, the bad news, or the really bad news?”  Gallono asked.  He was attempting to make light of the situation, but the fact that he wouldn’t raise his head to make eye contact with Hastelloy told the real story.

“Let’s start with the good, and work our way down.”

Gallono slowly raised his head, sporting a forced smile.  The kind of pasted on look a boy makes while the first girl he asks out on a date turns him down cold.  “There’s some good news actually.  First, the Nexus and the accompanying regeneration chamber are still functional.  Along with that, we still have full sensor capabilities and can pretty much monitor activity throughout the entire solar system.  The catch is the ship’s power system is damaged to the point we don’t have enough juice to sustain operating the Nexus in its current configuration.

“What are you getting to Commander?  We won’t be able to keep everyone in the Nexus alive?”

“No sir, that’s not it,” Gallono replied.  “Right now the information of everyone in the Nexus is at the surface and capable of being transferred to the regeneration chamber.  This draws an unsustainable amount of power.  Moving the lives already in the Nexus to permanent stasis will conserve power.”

“That means if any of us die we’ll also be locked in the Nexus until we get back to Novus,” Tomal protested. 

“I can solve that issue by establishing a separate partition within the Nexus to house the five of us,” Gallono stated, happy to be able to show up the cocky engineer.  “If we die, we’d still come back through the regeneration chamber without trouble.”

“This step will give us enough power to keep the Nexus, regeneration chamber, and the sensors going?”  Hastelloy asked. 

“A qualified yes,” Gallono replied.  “There’s not enough to run the sensors all the time.  My recommendation is we only run a sensor sweep every couple
of weeks.”

“Can we pick and choose who we move into permanent stasis, or is it all or nothing?” Hastelloy asked.

“Unfortunately, there’s no middle ground here.  It is all or nothing.”

“Very well, implement your recommendation.  If that’s the good news, I am not sure I can handle the bad.”

Gallono’s face contorted into a grimace as his composure faltered.  His voice cracked and waivered as he continued, “The bad news is everything else is gone.  Not in the lost but soon to be found sort of way.  We’re talking the chopped up, pulverized, torched and scattered to the six corners of the universe sort of gone.”

Gaining control of his emotions again, Gallono gave one last update.  “The really bad news is there’s no way to make repairs.  Basically, everything is either missing or fried.  To even have the ability to manufacture replacement parts is hundreds of thousands of years away. 

“We can’t just pull up some minerals and make nanochips.  Nor can we simply hammer out some metals to reconstruct the hull.  These are complex alloys that require massive and extremely precise processing facilities.  To be frank, no one on this bridge, or in the Nexus, has the technical know-how to construct those kinds of facilities.  The bottom line is this ship will never fly or send a transmission again.  We’re stuck here; indefinitely.”

“Indefinitely, did you hear that Captain, all twenty million of us are stuck here indefinitely,” Tomal barked, while Tonwen administe
red his inoculation. “We should have been home days ago by purging half the Nexus, but you were right.  Being marooned here for a virtual eternity is preferable.”

Hastelloy looked over at his first officer.  Not a word was spoken, only a look between two men who had served together for numerous life times was exchanged.  Confident his order was understood, the captain turned his back on Tomal. 

Gallono sprung into action and raced toward Tomal.  Before the arrogant young officer had time to react, Gallono delivered a hard snap kick to the stomach.  From the force of the blow, Tomal buckled forward at the waist bringing his head down.  Using that movement to his advantage, Gallono followed with an uppercut delivered with so much force and anger that Tomal’s wife back on Novus probably felt the impact.  The heavy blow sent Tomal flipping backwards over the science station and crashing to the deck.

The Captain turned back around and walked towards Tomal, who was still on the ground trying to remember who and where he was.  Hastelloy grabbed the lieutenant under his armpits, pulled him up to his feet and brushed some of the dust and soot from the man’s shoulders.  “Oh my, Tomal, it looks like you had a bit of an accident.  You need to be more careful.”

Tomal locked eyes with Gallono and lurched forward against the captain’s steely grip.  “You son of a bitch, I’ll kill you.”

“Like you
keep insisting we should have killed ten million of our own soldiers?  Let him go Captain, he’d learn an interesting lesson,” Gallono said dryly while rubbing the knuckles on his right hand.

“Captain, he hit me; twice.  He may have even broken my nose. That’s striking a fellow officer.  I demand he be punished accordingly.”

“Is that so?  From what I saw you tripped over Tonwen’s workstation.  Did anyone else see commander Gallono hit the lieutenant?”  Hastelloy asked of his crew. 

Tonwen served on ships long enough to know what was going on and had the smarts to keep his mouth shut.  Valnor was simply too dumbfounded by the events to utter a word. 

Hastelloy held the dead silence until Tomal relaxed against his grip; conceding defeat.  “Let’s take a walk, Tomal.”  On his way off the bridge the Captain handed Gallono a data pad.  “Make the necessary changes to the Nexus, and reconfigure the regeneration chamber to the exact specifications on this data pad.  Then have the crew meet Tomal and I outside,” Hastelloy said as he attached a weapons belt to his hip.

With that
the captain ushered Tomal, who was still wiping blood from his face with his sleeve, off the bridge and down the main corridor.  The two men came to the double door exit hatch and went in.  Once the first set of doors closed behind them, Hastelloy felt a rush of warm air fill the airlock.  When the pressure and temperature matched the exterior environment, the outer door opened and the two men stepped out onto the southern beach of the island.

The scene the two men encountered was picturesque.  The sun was beginning to set over the horizon while a soft breeze gave a refreshing deliverance from the heat.  A faint scent of salt filled the air, accompanied by the rhythmic beating of waves against the sandy shores.

“Wow, the temperature is a bit hot for my taste but this is an absolutely stunning planet,” Hastelloy commented.  Turning his attention to Tomal he took measure of the man as he slowly looked him over from head to toe.  The intimidation tactic was extremely effective as Tomal looked like he wanted to crawl into a hole and vanish.  “I’m curious Lieutenant, what did you hope to accomplish with your insubordinate outburst back there?”

Without pausing for a reply, Hastelloy continued.  “Your captain already ruled out your suggested course of action.  What’s more, your fellow crew already showed extreme disgust with your plan.  Most importantly, the events you were commenting on had already happened, nothing could be changed.  Now I know you’re a smart man, so I have to assume there was some rationale behind your tirade.  Explain it to me please.”

Tomal stopped holding his wounds, and straightened up to deliver his reply.  “When you put it that way sir, my comments were clearly based on anger and not a carefully considered agenda.  It was a mistake, and I regret it.”

Hastelloy held his stiff posture and continued with a piercing stare.  “I can dismiss rash words spoken in the heat of the moment, but your tone has been insubordinate for a while now.  We have a very difficult task ahead of us, and I need to know I can count on you to follow orders.  It’s not your place to question my judgment; I command and you follow.  You’re by far
the finest engineer with whom I have ever served.  To be frank, I need you.  However, if you cannot follow orders without question then you will be a liability to our mission.  In that case, I’ll have no choice but to return you to the Nexus and keep you there.  Do I make myself clear?”

Tomal adorned his most contrite expression, but the sincerity in his voice was lacking.  “Your point is very clear, sir.  You have my word that I am dedicated to the mission of getting us and our fellow soldiers home.”  Gaining confidence, he continued.  “You have my word.  I’ll stop at nothing to accomplish that goal.  I’m still an asset to this mission and request permission to remain active in this assignment.”

“Very well, Lieutenant.”  Hastelloy then shifted the tone of the conversation from a dressing down of a subordinate to seeking advice on a plan of action.  “I need you to design an ocean fairing craft that can get us to the main land quickly.”

“About that, I have a suggestion.  Rather than reworking the Nexus and locking everyone away, why don’t we use the regeneration chamber to bring them all out of the Nexus?  With 20 million trained soldiers we could dispose of the Alpha threat and take over the Sigma species settlement.  In fact, we could take over the whole planet.  Then we’d be able to get home in a few years, rather than several hundred thousand.”

Hastelloy exhaled a frustrated breath.  Did this man before him have any semblance of Novan moral values at all?  “We’re not species Alpha.  I’m sure, given the opportunity, the Alpha would do exactly as you suggest.  The difference is we are the Novi.  We don’t conquer civilizations and invoke slave labor for our own benefit.  This ideal is the heart of what it means to be Novan.  We will not dishonor ourselves by violating it.”

“Understood,” Tomal responded while looking at the ground.  “In that case, I think we can reshape sections of the outer hull of the ship to make a boat.  The trick will be coming up with a way to propel the ship.  Give me a few hours to work up a design and we can get the crew working on it.”

Hastelloy heard footsteps coming up from behind and turned around to see the rest of his crew join them on the beach.  “The Nexus and regeneration chamber have been reconfigured as you requested,” Gallono reported.

“Very well.”  Hastelloy gestured for Tomal to join the rest of his crew.  He needed to stand alone as the commanding officer to deliver his next set of orders.  “Suicide for the sake of changing forms or circumstances is strictly
forbidden by our people, but in this situation we have no choice.  We need to blend in with species Sigma in order to attack the Alpha with the element of surprise on our side.  This is an amoral act I ask of you, but it needs doing nonetheless.”

In unison, the four members of his crew exploded with protests.  Even Gallono and Tomal set aside their feud for the occasion.  Their disgust at the idea was completely justified.  When the Nexus first became widely used throughout Novan society, people would kill themselves on a whim.  Maybe they had a bad day and wanted to end it.  Maybe the person despised life with their spouse or family, so they ended it.  Using the Nexus was a pretty convenient tool to get around the till death do us part section of the union vows. 

Others abused the Nexus to improve their physical forms.  If they didn’t like the look of their nose, a new one was just a quick slit of the wrist away.  The abuse reached its most perverse levels when people started altering their physical forms completely.  If they wanted to know what it was like to fly like a bird, they only had to adjust the regeneration chamber, kill themselves, and away they flew.

Those were dark years for the Novi.  The only thing that saved their society was the council signing user guidelines into law.  Individuals could only be regenerated into their original physical form; ugly nose and all.  Each death was to be evaluated by the courts before regeneration was allowed.  If a person’s death was ruled a suicide their life force was expunged from the Nexus and terminated. 

For almost 12,000 years, using the Nexus for form alteration was the most despicable act a Novan could contemplate.  Not only were the individuals executed, their remaining family members were treated as pariahs and shunned.  The last incident of suicide declared by the courts occurred over 9,000 years ago.  What Hastelloy now asked his crew to do was simply not done - period.

Shouting over the protests of his crew, Hastelloy continued. “This is my order and you bear no responsibility for this action.  The dishonor is mine, and mine alone.”  Upon uttering his last statement, with a lightning quick movement he pulled his wave blaster from its holster and shot Gallono square in the forehead.  Before Gallono’s body had time to fall lifeless on the sand, Hastelloy shot the other three crew members with equally lethal precision.

Now standing alone on the beach with four dead bodies, Hastelloy was overcome with doubt and despair.  What had he just done?  The choices he’d made during the last couple days led him to murder his own crew and force them to violate their most sacred ideal.  The magnitude of his actions caused his knees to buckle.  Hastelloy collapsed into the sand and vomited violently.